Anyone got a good SWATH ptrading script they'd be willing to share? I'm looking for the GOOD kind, NOT just a buy-dump followed by a transwarp and negotiate-sell.

I want it to pick up full holds of X product from planet W, takeoff, sell product X, buy product Y, drop off product Y, pick up more product X, and repeat until the port is either down to Z% or the planet runs out of product X to sell or storage room for product Y.

I'd be happy to manually warp the planet to another sector to repeat the process between port drains, but at least within the single sector draining one port completely, it'd be wonderful to automate. Right now I'm using a macro, but I still have to manually hit the macro over and over since I have to wait for SWATH to finish haggling before I can hit the macro for another cycle. Twenty minutes of hitting F6 (l64^Mtnl3250^Mtnt2250^Mqpt^M), waiting 2 seconds, hitting F7 (0^M^M), waiting 2 seconds, hitting F6 . . . you can see how desperate I am for a script ;>

I know tons of C++, but to me the SWATH Java programs I've seen look like a total kludge, even if the formatting is similar, so I guess I'm hopeless for writing scripts. Mongoose? Anyone?

quote:
Anyone got a good SWATH ptrading script they'd be willing to share? I'm looking for the GOOD kind, NOT just a buy-dump followed by a transwarp and negotiate-sell.

I want it to pick up full holds of X product from planet W, takeoff, sell product X, buy product Y, drop off product Y, pick up more product X, and repeat until the port is either down to Z% or the planet runs out of product X to sell or storage room for product Y.

I'd be happy to manually warp the planet to another sector to repeat the process between port drains, but at least within the single sector draining one port completely, it'd be wonderful to automate. Right now I'm using a macro, but I still have to manually hit the macro over and over since I have to wait for SWATH to finish haggling before I can hit the macro for another cycle. Twenty minutes of hitting F6 (l64^Mtnl3250^Mtnt2250^Mqpt^M), waiting 2 seconds, hitting F7 (0^M^M), waiting 2 seconds, hitting F6 . . . you can see how desperate I am for a script ;>

I know tons of C++, but to me the SWATH Java programs I've seen look like a total kludge, even if the formatting is similar, so I guess I'm hopeless for writing scripts. Mongoose? Anyone?


firstly you can smooth that makro down
l64^Mtnl3^Mtnt2^Mqpt^M
I dont have the script but I would like to ask why you want to do this? .. because it's kinda turn wasteful .. unless your doing it in a game where ptrade% is set low .. just curious
Regards


<<Doctor Who>>

Negotiate's at the default 60%, and I did the calculations.

Experimental data (all sales are to the same fully upgraded port pair when it is 100% across the board, further sample data in last paragraph below):
buy 250 org: 4500
sell 250 org: 23500
buy 250 equip: 12500
sell 250 equip: 35500
nego 250 org: 12500
nego 250 equip: 19500

The four turn cycle selling one set of holds at a time makes 42k/4 turns, while the two turn cycle buydumping then negotiating at the opposite port makes 15k/2 turns, making it 3k/turn less efficient to negotiate with a game set at 60%...

It only makes 11k/2 turns extra selling off organics from a farming world one set of holds at a time instead of negotiating, so unless you've got nothing that'll earn you more than 5.5k/turn as a blue, negotiating makes sense for product you "got for free", but only for free product (as in SDT and farms)... product you had to pay a fee up-front for is worth selling one set of holds at a time...

So, given this data, and I'm sure I'm not the only one that's figured all this out, SOMEONE out there has got to have a script that does what I said :> Though it may be a someone who isn't sharing...

*** Sample Data: I realize those nego values in the table above are LESS than 60% of the single sale values. I double-checked the data and that's how it comes up. I both tried negotiating just 250 to the same 100% port I sold 250 to (always after it'd regened to 100% ), and negotiating 2000 and dividing how much they'd buy it for by 8, and got the same approximate result from each (slightly lower average on the 2000, but that's to be expected since part of that 2000 is selling at less than a 100% buy rating). I also did each thing 10 times each at the same pair waiting for 100% each time and took the average, rounding buys up and sells down to the nearest 500, for a good scientific sampling. The game is definitely set at 60%, but the value it ends up amounting to in REAL use is closer to 55%. All values are via haggling then taking the 100% value as calculated by a psychic probe.

Edited by - Xentropy on April 27 2002 6:17:13 PM

quote:
Anyone got a good SWATH ptrading script they'd be willing to share? I'm looking for the GOOD kind, NOT just a buy-dump followed by a transwarp and negotiate-sell.

I want it to pick up full holds of X product from planet W, takeoff, sell product X, buy product Y, drop off product Y, pick up more product X, and repeat until the port is either down to Z% or the planet runs out of product X to sell or storage room for product Y.

I'd be happy to manually warp the planet to another sector to repeat the process between port drains, but at least within the single sector draining one port completely, it'd be wonderful to automate. Right now I'm using a macro, but I still have to manually hit the macro over and over since I have to wait for SWATH to finish haggling before I can hit the macro for another cycle. Twenty minutes of hitting F6 (l64^Mtnl3250^Mtnt2250^Mqpt^M), waiting 2 seconds, hitting F7 (0^M^M), waiting 2 seconds, hitting F6 . . . you can see how desperate I am for a script ;>

I know tons of C++, but to me the SWATH Java programs I've seen look like a total kludge, even if the formatting is similar, so I guess I'm hopeless for writing scripts. Mongoose? Anyone?



Hi all ;
I have a sell/buy/dump script for swath , this program is great for exp gaining..for those blues that will someday play red

If your interested please email me.
videotees@kuentos.guam.net

[url="http://geocities.com/videotees/twars.html"]Vid's World on Guam[/url]
telnet://vidsworld.no-ip.org:2002

quote:
Negotiate's at the default 60%, and I did the calculations.

Experimental data (all sales are to the same fully upgraded port pair when it is 100% across the board, further sample data in last paragraph below):
buy 250 org: 4500
sell 250 org: 23500
buy 250 equip: 12500
sell 250 equip: 35500
nego 250 org: 12500
nego 250 equip: 19500


first of all, your results will vary depending on the ports you use, so be careful of relying on experimental data. each port in the game has different best price characteristics.

lets make it numberless and see what results we come up with. this is a comparison of BUYDOWN-SELLOFF vs. BUYDOWN-NEGOTIATE, where you have to buydown 250 holds at a time, selloff the same way, or negotiate all the product in one turn.

both methods have BUYDOWN in common, so the benefits come in the choice between SELLOFF and NEGOTIATE. given a trade percent of X%, and 250 ship holds lets do the analysis:

SELLOFF costs PORTMAX/250 turns (131 turns for 32k port).
NEGOTIATE costs 1 turn.

SELLOFF earns 100% creds.
NEGOTIATE earns X% creds.

of you choose NEGOTIATE, what can you do with those extra turns that might make more money? how about another BUYDOWN-NEGOTIATE? since the 1-turn NEGOTIATE is negligible compared to the turn cost of BUYDOWN, you can basically do 2 BUYDOWN-NEGOTIATES with the same amount of turns as 1 BUYDOWN-SELLOFF, right? so the math falls out like this:

if X%50% then 2 BUY-NEGs is more efficient for the same turns.

in conclusion, i think with a 60% trade percent you would be better off doing 2 BUY-NEGs except for the fact that you have to upgrade another set of ports. for the short-term, i'd keep up the SELLOFF method because you only have to defend 2 ports instead of 4, and you don't have to shell out the cash for upgrading the other 2 ports, but you should be looking toward doing 2 BNs with your turns in the future.

regards,
the reverend
icq 83250263
the.reverend@coastgames.com
http://thereverend.coastgames.com/tradewars/

Just a simple short-term solution...
Make your macro do the whole cycle 5 times or so (if SWATH can hold a macro that long, which I'm not sure about). Then you don't have to hit it as often. If the macro length is unlimited, you may be able to make it long enough to finish off the port/planet with one keystroke.

Alternatively, you could make macro F5 do one cycle, and macro F6 do macro F5 5 times. However, I don't think you can tell a Swath macro to call another macro. I used to do stuff like that all the time whenever I had to do some mass-editting of data files for work (i.e., if I wanted to delete the first 5 columns of every row of 1000s of lines of text data).

Just some thoughts. I don't know any JAVA either (I'm a FORTRAN guy), so I feel your pain.

quote:
Just a simple short-term solution...
Make your macro do the whole cycle 5 times or so (if SWATH can hold a macro that long, which I'm not sure about). Then you don't have to hit it as often. If the macro length is unlimited, you may be able to make it long enough to finish off the port/planet with one keystroke.


Unfortunately, this would only work if I did not haggle. Since I'd like to have SWATH autohaggle on every cycle for that extra 1k/turn or so, I have to pause and wait for the autohaggle every few keys, which means waiting before hitting the macro again. Thanks though.

Vid Kid's script actually works for the most part the way I need, so I am using it. I'd still like to learn to script, myself, though, since there are some improvements I'd like to make. Maybe I'll check out TWX.

quote:
first of all, your results will vary depending on the ports you use, so be careful of relying on experimental data. each port in the game has different best price characteristics.


Varies based on some cycle, too. Some days are just awful for margins, others are great. I only got those numbers to simplify my example.

quote:
lets make it numberless and see what results we come up with. this is a comparison of BUYDOWN-SELLOFF vs. BUYDOWN-NEGOTIATE, where you have to buydown 250 holds at a time, selloff the same way, or negotiate all the product in one turn.

both methods have BUYDOWN in common, so the benefits come in the choice between SELLOFF and NEGOTIATE. given a trade percent of X%, and 250 ship holds lets do the analysis:

SELLOFF costs PORTMAX/250 turns (131 turns for 32k port).
NEGOTIATE costs 1 turn.

SELLOFF earns 100% creds.
NEGOTIATE earns X% creds.

of you choose NEGOTIATE, what can you do with those extra turns that might make more money? how about another BUYDOWN-NEGOTIATE? since the 1-turn NEGOTIATE is negligible compared to the turn cost of BUYDOWN, you can basically do 2 BUYDOWN-NEGOTIATES with the same amount of turns as 1 BUYDOWN-SELLOFF, right?


I agree with all of the above, and you'll note in my post above I even admit that with FREE product, stolen or planet-produced, you are better off doing a negotiation, since you can make more credits spending your turns elsewhere.

quote:
so the math falls out like this:

if X%50% then 2 BUY-NEGs is more efficient for the same turns.

in conclusion, i think with a 60% trade percent you would be better off doing 2 BUY-NEGs except for the fact that you have to upgrade another set of ports. for the short-term, i'd keep up the SELLOFF method because you only have to defend 2 ports instead of 4, and you don't have to shell out the cash for upgrading the other 2 ports, but you should be looking toward doing 2 BNs with your turns in the future.


Here's where you, unfortunately, miss a key fact. If the product being sold has a COST, as is the case here, your PROFITS from a 60% negotiate setting are lower than 60%. Your gross margins are 60% of normal, but your profits are, to use the numerical examples for equipment I gave in my last post as an example, 30.435% of normal!

Why? Because regardless of which way you sell the product, you're paying full price on the buy side. Let's say 250 holds of equipment cost you 10k, and selloff earns you 30k per 250. Negotiate at 60% would give you 18k per 250. That's 8k profit instead of 20k, or only 40% PROFIT due to the 60% negotiate setting!

So, to modify your conclusion:

if PROFIT%50% then 2 BUY-NEGs is more efficient for the same turns.

Now, how do we determine PROFIT% based on the game settings? Well, that's a bit more complicated since it will vary from day to day based on profit margins due to buy/sell price fluctuations. But, if you work it all out, it simplifies to:

X = Nego setting
Y = Purchase price per 250
Z = Sale price per 250

If (X%*Z-Y)/(Z-Y)50%, negotiate.

These are all-encompassing formulas, since even for free product you can just plug in a zero for Y and realize that yes, in a 60% game, you're always better off doing a negotiate if the purchase price of that product was 0. But in most cases in a 60% game, if you had to buy the product, your margins will fluctuate in the 25-45% range, and you're always better off selling off instead.

To further simplify it, you can call Z a one and solve for Y in terms of X at a solution of 50% (0.5). This allows us to come up with the purchase price % at which a given negotiation % is necessary to be worthwhile. This gives us the VERY simple formula 2X-1=Y.

This means double the negotiate % and subtract 100%. That's the % of the sale price your purchase price must be in order to make it better for you to selloff than negotiate. So for 60%, if you can beat a 20% purchase price, by all means negotiate! Otherwise, you're making more per turn selling off.

As a quick proof of my equation, if you can sell 250 equip for 30k, and your negotiate setting is 75%, by 2X-1=Y, I should negotiate if I can buy 250 equip for 50% of that (15k) or less. Let's check that out. Okay, buy for 15k, sell for 30k, profit 15k. Buy for 15k, nego for 22.5k, profit 7.5k. Voila, 50% profit for 50% of the turns. The break-even point. So my formula works.

In a 60% or less game, the buy rate of 20% probably means you should rarely, if ever negotiate bought product. In my example numbers, organics comes pretty close to the break-even point, but equipment is by far better to selloff, so you might as well go with the full cycle.

In a 75% or higher game, a buy rate of 50% means negotiation is almost always worthwhile, since it's pretty rare you don't at least make a 100% markup on your product.

In between 60 and 75, things are a bit stickier, and may even change day to day. You may want to port once normally and plug in that day's Y/Z percentage to find out whether at today's point in the cycle at that particular port pair you're better off with a nego or a selloff.

Hehe this got WAY longer than I intended, but I love my analytical mathematics.

quote:
Here's where you, unfortunately, miss a key fact. If the product being sold has a COST, as is the case here, your PROFITS from a 60% negotiate setting are lower than 60%. Your gross margins are 60% of normal, but your profits are, to use the numerical examples for equipment I gave in my last post as an example, 30.435% of normal!


what you say is correct. i didn't state my assumption of MBBS mode, therefore megarob making the BUY cost ZERO. i guess its an innate assumption on my part. thank you for the excellent analysis! quite educational.


..METHOD....COST/32k..EARN/32k.....NET....+.MEGA....TOTAL
1.BUY-SELL...3.mil.....5.mil......2.mil....3.mil....5.mil
2.BUY-NEG....6.mil...10*60%.mil...0.mil....6.mil....6.mil


regards,
the reverend
icq 83250263
the.reverend@coastgames.com
http://thereverend.coastgames.com/tradewars/

Edited by - the reverend on May 01 2002 7:02:44 PM

Wow you guys took this crap to another level ..
Yea my main question was why .. if it was 60% ptrade value then he would still be better to dump/rob/ptrade.. the only exception to this would be if you are reallllly low on ports or have really high turns .. and still there are other values you need to figgure in for this to work good .. ie .. calculating the price drop per unit traded of the port itself .. it's not that difficult (seeing the maths you guys were posting it shouldnt be hard for you to see how it's done) .. but after each sell off of EQ then the port will pay you less .. once you get that far you can really do the maths to see what port is going to earn you some sweet cash .. when you do this trading at 250 per time..



<<Doctor Who>>

That last is exactly why you really want to have the profit ratio quote:
TWX Proxy runs nicely in WINE. It spazzes when you first start it (as you can see from the errors in the console) but it stabilizes the first time it loses focus. After that it runs fine.

So watch out y'all, Mongoose is back in the game.

TWX in Linux! [screenshot]

Suddenly you're Busted!