quote:Originally posted by Shorty

One other thing that a lot of people either dont want to give out or dont think of is triple trading. If you find a port pair that is trading all 3 products between them then trade them all at once. For example if you have a SBB - BSS pair and for ease of explanation 1000 product each and you have 100 holds. You set your pair trade script to trade half your holds of each product 50 Fuel, 50 Org, 50 Equip. It takes the same amount of turns to buy or sell 3 products as it does 2 because you only port once and it also gives you an average of 6 exp per porting instead of 4 if you haggle for exp. It does take a few more turns because you have to move between them more using less holds but the extra money is worth the turns and your making the most efficient use of the ports. What you will have to figure out is how many holds of each you will have to use to trade them down balanced to get the most out of them. The example is easy to figure out but if you have the same ports at 1k, 2k, 3k then you would have to start with 16, 33, 66 holds used for trading respectively so you use the port evenly and all products will hit 0 or close to it at relatively the same time.
In a low turn game it is best to drop fighters at all ports especially, you have to remember that just because you dont have a use for some ports at the time doesnt mean someone else doesnt use them. I also like to drop a fighter in all high warp sectors, 4-6 warps, because they are the center of the traffic patterns and you can use them to attack people hitting your fighters. Do all your port trading and port finding manually, dont let a script run world whatever because it runs blindly into the universe and wont trade unless it happens on a pair, it doesnt check your port searches and use them for efficiency. Twarp to or near the ports you want to use as close as possible and then run your script or macro to trade them down. You have to think of what your getting for your turns and make a decision if its worth it. I look at holo scans like this, ether probes are expensive the first day or 2 of a game, after that there are fighters all over to stop them, so if I enter a sector that has more than 1 or 2 unexplored next to it I holo scan, you are already there and to manually check them out would take turns, the ether probe would be a major waste, and the holo scan is only 1 turn. You have to weigh the cost and decide for yourself. Good luck and happy hunting.

Unless there are so few ports in the game that is difficult to find equip/org pairs, it makes you the most money to just trade equip and organics. The profit between buy and sell on them is highest. The only reason you would want to double trade is to build exp for going red, and then you'd want to trade as little of the least profitable product as possible.

Some games I was on the Equ Org ports were run down, leaving only the Ore Equ and Ore Org ports if any. Sometimes just the Ore Org ports were left. Unless you wanted to do TWarp trading with ports that aren't next to each other but close. I've heard about that, but never done it, and haven't found a script for it. Not as profitable, but if it is your only way to make money you almost need it.

Orion_Blastar, to locate the Pair Ports, click Trading->Show Pair Ports. ATTAC will show you the best ports to trade at. YOu can also look at Blocked Ports. These are ports that now have a fighter in the sector since you last ran CIM. Running CIM will update the best pair port report.
earth.

I know but sometimes the paired port data is bogus and I get a paired port that is in an empty sector. No destroyed ports, unless someone used Tedit to remove the port I am not sure how it got on the list. The same with the Evil Pairs, sometimes I get an empty sector or a XXS port in the Evil Pair list.

The only thing I have done is download the scriptupdates.zip file from your web site, but I reinstalled ATTAC 4.1.7 and it seems to have corrected some of the bugs. Maybe the updated scripts created phantom port data in the data files?