Elite Dangerous - Trading Tools - User Privacy - Progress Pt10

Update: You can now support this project at Patreon!

The boring bits of the Elite Dangerous Trade data tool... Yes, this weekend I've been checking as to what information I can extract without wanting to draw the ire of Frontier... Using OCR you can pretty much read anything, at least here in the UK, so long as I don't represent this as my data and I don't charge anything to access the information.  Which I never will.  Then we're free to collect information.

I believe tools like this go one step further, because you can argue we'll be showing off the internal complexity of the markets in the game and so perhaps selling the trade side of the game.

Anyway, as part of the boring bits, I also have to check with you, the users, what you want to let the program do.

Now clearly, by downloading the program you accept it's going to run on your computer... You do get that yes?... I had one guy, well lets say, he's a bit slow, he didn't realise I was writing a program, he asked to be a tester and when I handed him the exe I got this very puzzling reply... "Where's the script"... it's a program mate.. a program... an executable.

Anyway, the one thing you guys get to control is what, if anything, the program is going to do with your data, both the information - like your name you type in - and the actual trade data you collect.

So, I've got some questions being asked, and a new configuration file which lets you take control of whether you share your data etc....

This is the penultimate build which is behind closed doors, I'm soon going to be able to collect this data to my server, so we'll start to see the application out there for download and more of you to try it.

However, I do still need more testers... Comment below to volunteer!

Update: You can now support this project at Patreon!

Elite Dangerous - Trading Tools - OCR - Progress Pt7

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Over the weekend I've been working on the collection of data, so I've been to a few more systems and stations, I've been checking the algorithm for finding the best route, and I've been giving myself some feedback...

The first two things I immediately wanted was the program to remember the last folder used, and also as I captured data, to be able to refresh the loaded information without having to close & open the tool again.  Basic stuff.

So, loading the data looks like this now:

Lets say we've got courier missions from LHS 1914 to FK5 2550, we select the start system, so LHS 1914:

This instantly populates the Stations and total list of commodities in columns 2 and 3 there.  We can select the specific station we're docked in as well:

Reducing the number of commodities, now we could just select Fk5 2550 from the destination system list, just to see what would bring us the most profit in running into that system:

The answer here is then given in the top right box, that result will stay there now until we change system or destination system, we can get the same search just without the station select from the second column also, but then the search would start from all stations in the source system on the left.

This search alone wasn't enough however, because I needed to be able to quickly find a supply of certain commodities, hence the new controls in the right bottom.

Lets say we want to find Beryllium for a specific mission goal, we can select that commodity by name from the drop down:

The results are the source of Beryllium from the database in best price (for purchase) order.  Obviously, if you've selected a commodity you've never seen before then you get no reply, unfortunately in the current context there is no distance, or connectivity in the database, so we don't know if these items are close or not, that is still a player decision*.

The other feature added there is the "Demand For" search, this simply lists those commodities in the database which are wanted somewhere, the results are given in best price (for sale) order, this allows you to quickly marry up any profit (if any) there maybe to be had, I find it most useful if the upper algorithm driven box comes up with an illegal selection.

* However, I do envisage changing the data collection so as data is captured from system to system we have a basic web of where it connected to where by input, this basic webbing could then be used to add "how many jumps" a commodity is from the selected source or destination systems.  However, to add all this functionality I need your help!

Elite Dangerous - Market & Trading Tools

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