Trading: knowing something others don't

Design, 24 October 2026. Modern rules; stage 1 built (October 2026), the rest proposed; Classic keeps 1984's market. It reworks how trading is presented and played, on top of the markets already built (markets and trade, economy and exchanges). Numbers marked (to tune) are starting points.

Why

A review of trading as built (October 2026) found the money is there, but the game isn't:

(Best runs offered by the trade computer from 29 systems in galaxy 1.) A run takes four or five minutes, so mid-game trading out-earns hunting pirates. The trouble is elsewhere:

1. It isn't intuitive. The market is a full exchange: 21 goods as four-letter tickers, a candle chart, an order book, fair value. A new commander wants to know what to buy here and where to sell it, and the screen doesn't say.
2. It isn't a game of discovery. The trade computer shows live prices at every market in range and the best run with its profit. Follow it and you're done: nothing to find out, nothing to outwit, no reason to read the news.
3. The clever parts are hidden. Limit orders already fill while you're away, even on a famine that starts after you leave. The news already travels at the speed of ships. Live prices everywhere make both pointless.

What Elite traders loved was knowing something others didn't and getting there first. This design puts that back, and adds what Mark asked for: markets you can learn to work, limit orders that matter, news cycles to ride, tips, true and false, from the people traders drink with, and insiders who'll sell what isn't theirs.

Principles

• Simple to start, deep to master, and mastery pays. A new commander can make money in their first minute without reading a chart. Learning the exchange (the chart, the order book, the trades feed) is part of the game, and each tool gives a real edge the simple view can't (section 1b).
• Information is the edge. You know what you've seen and what's reached you. Everything else is out of date, a rumour, or a guess.
• Every tip has a person behind it, with a reason to tell you and a feeling about it: glad, sad, mad or bad.
• Deterministic. Events, news, tips and prices come from the seed and the clock, so the same galaxy for everyone; in the shared galaxy, the server holds the same state.
• In-game only. Credits and goods never touch real money (principles).

1. The trader's screen

The charts stay: they're one of the best things in the game. What changes is everything around them, so the screen answers a trader's question at a glance and the chart tells the story.

Left: plain lists instead of tickers.

• Cheap here (made here, or in a glut): the best buys, each with what you last knew it fetches elsewhere.

  Furs 38 Cr · stock 120 t · last seen 61 Cr at Zaonce, 40 min ago

• Sells well here (wanted here, or short): what this station pays over the odds for, and how much of it you carry.

  Computers 112 Cr · wanted · you have 6 t

• Your hold: each good you carry, what it fetches here, what you paid, the profit or loss.
• Full names, plain words (wanted, in a glut, short, illegal here), a small trend line beside each, and a line saying why: Food is cheap: Lave grows it. Computers sell well: Lave doesn't make them.

Centre: the chart, as now, for the good you've picked: candles, time frames, volume, the fair-value line. Added: markers where news reached this station (famine news, strike over) and where you traded, so the news cycle (section 4) can be watched on the candles.

Right: buy and sell made simple. One tap for as much as you can afford and carry (or a chosen amount), one tap to sell the lot; price impact and total shown before you confirm; a one-line limit order (section 5).

The order book and the trades feed sit beside the chart, as now, folded small until you open them (and remembered open). They're not extras: they're where a good trader's edge comes from (section 1b).

On a phone: the lists first; tap a good and its chart opens full width, with buy and sell under it.

The back room (the black market) stays a separate door, as now.

1b. Learning the exchange pays

The lists get a newcomer trading; the exchange's tools make a trader rich. Each gives an honest edge, and the game says what it earned, so learning feels rewarding.

• The order book saves money. A one-tap trade takes the station's price and walks it as you buy. Reading the book, you place a limit order inside the spread and buy cheaper, or split a big order so it doesn't move the price against you. Bought 30 t furs at 36.2 · 41 Cr better than buying at market.
• The trades feed shows who knows something. NPC traders who've heard news trade on it before the station's news board shows it (they hear first, in the saloon and on the radio). A run of big buys in medicine, no news yet: someone knows about a plague. Watch the feed and you see the headline coming.
• The chart shows the news cycle. The overshoot when news breaks, the drift back, the glut after (section 4) are shapes on the candles. Sell the peak, buy the glut, and the game notices: Sold into the overshoot · 18% above where it settled.
• Someone teaches you. In the saloon, an old trader (Ma Reyes, retired, glad of the company, sad that nobody asks any more) teaches one tool at a time: reading the book, spotting the smart money, timing a news cycle. Each lesson is a small task in the real market, with a reward, and she remembers how you did.
• A Merchant rank. Profit made with these tools (limit fills, reading the feed, the cycle) builds a Merchant's rank alongside combat and exploration, and the rank opens doors: better insiders will deal with you (section 3), price alerts on the exchange, warehouse space at more stations (merchants).

2. Prices you know

The trade computer stops being an oracle. It knows:

• Prices you've seen yourself, at stations you've docked at, with their age.
• Price reports, which reach a station at the speed of news (10 minutes plus 12 per light year, as world news does now), so far markets are older.
• What you've been told (section 3), marked as such until you've seen it with your own eyes.

Every price elsewhere shows its age and source: 61 Cr · 40 min old, ~70 Cr · a tip. The best-runs list works from this knowledge and says how sure it is. Ages fade the confidence; a famine or boom you've heard of is taken into account. You can still be first, and you can still be wrong.

A newcomer isn't left blind. A commander starts with the Lave region's reports (a trade almanac, of the kind Elite came with), and the first time the trader's screen opens it says, in one line, that prices elsewhere are only as fresh as the news.

3. The saloon

Every station has somewhere traders rest: the saloon (a bar on a Coriolis; a tea room, a shebeen or a club elsewhere, by the station's culture). It's a tab beside News.

Who's there. Two to four people each visit, from the seed and the clock, so they come and go. Each has a name, a trade and a mood:

• Glad: a hauler who's just made a killing on medicine and can't stop talking. Free, true, and probably already too late.
• Sad: a miner laid off by a strike, selling what he knows for the price of a drink. True, and early.
• Mad: a captain cheated by a broker, telling you where the broker is buying cheap so you can undercut him. True, with a grudge.
• Bad: a smooth talker with a tip that sends you the wrong way while her friends buy up what you'd have carried. False.

Tips. Buy someone a drink (a few credits) and they talk; for a bigger tip, they want paying properly (to tune: 20–300 Cr). A tip is one of:

• Stale: news you'd get anyway, a little sooner.
• Early: a world event before its news breaks. Events come from the seed and the clock, so the game knows a famine is coming before anyone's heard: "My cousin ships out of Riedquat. The harvest's failed, and nobody knows yet." The most valuable kind.
• Planted: false, put about by someone who profits if you believe it.

Telling them apart is the skill: who's telling you, why, and how they feel about it; whether it fits what you know; a trader's reputation in the saloon builds as their tips come true or don't. Nothing is labelled true.

Tips are legal. Overhearing a laid-off miner is gossip, not a crime, however true it turns out: the only risk is believing the wrong person.

(Stage 1 built, 26 October 2026, src/game/saloon.ts: a Saloon tab beside News, named for the station's people (a saloon, a club, a tea room or a shebeen); two to four regulars, a dozen per station coming and going every two hours, each with a name, a trade, a mood you read from how they're behaving, and a drink price. Tips come from the galaxy's own events within 15 LY: glad regulars tell stale news, sad and mad ones early news (true, before it reaches the board), and about one regular in five is a liar who plants it. A drink buys the talk; the sad and the liars want paying properly (40–160 Cr) before they name the system. Once the news, or the silence, would have reached you, a regular's card shows how many of their tips came true. A door at the back leads to the back room. Insiders, the inspectors and Ma Reyes are still to come.)

Insiders are another matter. Some people in the saloon have information that isn't theirs to sell: a station clerk who sees the price reports before they're posted, a company contact who knows a shipping schedule, a port official who knows a crackdown is coming. Paying one of them is insider trading: more reliable than bar talk, dearer (to tune: 200–1,000 Cr), and illegal in lawful systems (corporate state, democracy, confederacy). Big trades on what they told you, made before it was public, can be noticed afterwards: the Co-operative's market inspectors may fine you and give you a record (an Offender, as for smuggling) (to tune: chance by size and government), and the insider loses their job, which they'll remember. Anarchies and feudal worlds don't care. The risk is the price of the edge.

Meet the founder in the saloon (Mark, 27 October 2026)

Players could meet Mark in the saloon. His callsign is Jameson, the original's default commander, which suits the corner table. It grows with the game:

1. He's really there. When CMDR Jameson is docked, he appears among that saloon's regulars, marked as a real commander, never a character. No chat is needed: he can buy the bar a round (everyone in the saloon that hour gets a drink and a tip on the house) and pin a note on the saloon board, signed, which stays after he leaves.
2. Office hours. Announced ahead on the socials: "Jameson will be in the Lave saloon on Friday at 8 pm." Commanders fly in, see who else turned up, and leave him their ideas on the ideas board from there. It's an event, and a reason to launch.
3. Talking. Real conversation waits for player chat, which waits for the online-safety sign-off (radio and comms). Office hours are the natural first place for it: one room, one host, moderated.

When he isn't there, nothing pretends he is: there's no NPC Jameson, only his notes.

4. The news cycle

Every event plays out in a cycle you can learn to ride:

1. Whispers: before it starts, early tips in nearby saloons (section 3).
2. The news breaks: as it reaches each station, NPC traders react, and the market overreacts at first: prices overshoot what the shortage alone would justify (to tune: +30% at the peak).
3. It settles: as traders arrive and the event runs, prices drift back towards the real shortage.
4. The aftermath: when it ends, stockpiles left behind make a glut, briefly cheap.

So "buy the rumour, sell the news" works, and so does buying the aftermath glut. The trades feed and the chart show each stage; the trader's screen says it in words: Food prices here are overshooting on the famine news.

5. Limit orders that matter

Limit orders already exist (they fill while you're away, from the price history). They become a tool you're shown how to use:

• From the trader's screen: Sell my furs here if they reach 70 or Buy medicine here if it falls to 40, one line with a price.
• On your behalf, out of sight: they fill while you're elsewhere, when the cycle swings past your price. You're told by message when you're next in range of news from that station, and the goods or credits wait at the station.
• A standing order is a bet on the news: place a sell order at Zaonce before the famine news arrives, and it fills on the overshoot whether you're there or not.

5b. Trading from the station

A good trader can work markets without leaving the dock (Mark, October 2026).

• Remote orders. From any station, place limit orders on any market within news range (25 LY). The order travels at the speed of news, as reports do: one to Zaonce arrives about an hour later, and is made on what you knew when you sent it.
• Settled there. What a remote order buys waits in storage at that station; what it sells is paid when it fills, held there until the news of it gets back to you (and then it's yours).
• What you can make without flying: a market's swings over time (buy the famine dip at Zaonce, sell the recovery, all from Lave). Moving goods between markets still means moving them: fly them yourself, or later hire a hauler (merchants).
• A broker's fee on each remote order (to tune: 2%), so flying it yourself still pays better.

6. Working the market

Ways to move a market, each with a cost and a risk:

• Cornering: buy up a good across nearby markets before the news lands, then sell into the shortage. Limited by your credits, hold and storage, and by depth: stations restock and NPC traders arrive (to tune).
• Starving a station: ambush the traders bound for it (as now, their cargo never arrives) and it posts higher buy orders. Piracy, with everything that brings.
• A planted rumour of your own: pay a saloon regular to spread a false tip. NPC traders believe it for a while and go the wrong way, leaving a market to you. Caught (a chance, higher in lawful systems), it's a record for market manipulation.
• Dumping: sell a large load into a thin market to crash it for a rival's arrival (shared galaxy).

Limits. Market depth, restocking and NPC arbitrage pull prices back, so no one commander can hold a market for long. In the shared galaxy, position limits and public trade histories (fair play) keep it a game.

7. Stages

1. (Built, October 2026.) The trader's screen, prices you know, and trading from the station (sections 1, 2 and 5b): plain lists round the chart, news markers on it, one-tap trades, the book and feed beside it, "better than market" feedback, the trade computer working from your knowledge, the starting almanac. The biggest change to how trading feels, and nothing new to simulate. As built: the lists (your hold or, on another market, your storage there; cheap; sells well; the rest folded) with trend lines and the best price you know elsewhere; the why line; the trade computer from your own visits and reports at the speed of news, ages shown (no almanac needed: reports from every system in range reach the station anyway); a market chooser for any market within 25 LY, shown as you know it, with limit orders sent there (arriving at the speed of news, 2% broker, fills heard of as news returns, goods kept in storage there); "better than market" when a limit order fills. Still to do from stage 1: news-arrival markers on the chart (world events here are already marked).
2. The saloon (section 3): the people, tips stale, early and planted, and their reputations. Then insiders, and the inspectors.
3. The news cycle (section 4): the overshoot and the aftermath glut, and saying it in words.
4. Limit orders on the trader's screen (section 5), and messages when they fill. Ma Reyes's lessons and the Merchant rank (section 1b).
5. Working the market (section 6): planted rumours and manipulation records; cornering falls out of stages 1–4.

Open questions

• How fresh should a new commander's almanac be, and how far should it reach?
• Should tips be per commander (each hears their own) or shared (the same people tell everyone the same thing)? Shared is fairer in the shared galaxy; per commander makes a single-player saloon feel alive.
• How often should buying from an insider be caught, so the risk is real but the edge worth it?
• Should the saloon be where contracts and crew are found too, in time?

Think something here should change? Say so on the ideas board, where others can vote it up, or email hello@witchspace.org.uk. If you code: this page is docs/design/trading.md on GitHub, open to pull requests.