I know it sounds brutal, but I am kinda liking NOT having autotrade. It really slows the game down in the beginning.

Sooo.... you take your little Pio, make a planet (which you have to do to upgrade your ship anyhow), and one of the very first research items is Ship AUTOTRADE!

An item soon after that is Planetary Autotrade.


Am I just whacked out? Or should I have slept on this idea before posting it?

sleep

I dont know about the regular autotrade being a research item, i think having it at start is necessary or new people and people starting late will be at a huge disadvantage. However that being said the regular autotrade is not as helpful as it once was because the basic 2 port trades are much more challenging to find.

This in mind, what I think would be cool is a research item callede Advanced AutoTrades, giving you access to 3 port trades.

I doubt if they will be a research item as they are just automated super cargo ships.

The big change in the auto trades are that the cargo ships will be subject to the same problems that your ship is subject too. When a planet makes an auto trade the cargo ship will not instantly go to the planet/port trade and come back. The ship will go to the planet/pot and sit in the sector for a couple of rounds before coming back to it's home planet. While at the destination port/planet it sits in open space completely visable to ANYONE that comes in and can be attacked. So there is a good chance your autotrade ships will be found and destroyed.

Might I be so bold as to ask if autotrade ships will leave warp trails?

Well, as with the last group they will all realspace but we haven't decided if they will leave trails.

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That is what kwae is talkiong about A-Blitz
First research item is ship autotrade and next is planet autotrade.

Well once PJ gets time to work on the autotrade stuff you will find that you wont want to have to research it. With auto trades you'll be able to do more than just comoddities you'll be able to move fighters/toprs/colonists ets even into those deep SG's so you can start a planet and let the autotrade run routes to fill them for you.

But thats probably going to come a bit later Gotta get the reg tradi routes runnin first

There ya go! You can research non-warp trail planetary cargo ships!