So, CCP dropped a blog about upcoming station trading changes coming on 9th of March.

These changes changes just about everything the trader bot relies on to be able to make a profit, so here is my question :

1. What is the sensible thing to do RIGHT NOW? Should we set it to sell all and wait for the changes to hit and see what happens to the trading bot? I can't see anything but risks with leaving orders up and running, but maybe there is some angle i'm not considering, so please give suggestions and motivations for what you think will be best for now and up until the changes happen on March 9th.

2. If the trader bot is to be profitable, it will need serious re-programming. Slav, any ideas on how long it would take to make the necessary changes from a pure programming perspective? With the data that CCP shared, can you start reworking the calculations and behaviours already to prepare for the change and shorten the time from patch to bot re-release?

3. As the trader license can be used for any of the other functions, which is currently (aside from the Trader/Autotrader) the most profitable algorithm? I saw something about how you wanted to implement some kind of LP run/sell order for the courier which sounds fantastic (With like you say, some kind of limited trigger to avoid flooding bots to Jita with LP orders, and again, it would now need to take the new changes into account, but for limited orders, it would be a lot less troublesome than the trader bot)

Anyway, please (Slav and everyone else!) share your thoughts, opinions and tips for how to proceed from this point.

Cheers!

1. I don't think you should do anything to sell orders. As soon as margin trading is gone, most difficult task will be item purchase, so your stock will help you to get extra profit for the first time after update. I expect that spread for items will increase as less competition overall will exist after the patch. If you have extra funds invest in PLEXs, I am sure PLEX price will jump and we will see new maximum.

2. I have already finished theoretical and coding work to find optimal price - price you should use to have max profit taken in mind competitor's orders data, spread, trade volume for the item. In old reality this price was 99% top price for the item and I did not implement this change as not necessary. With new variables added, the formula will work much better and bots will get EXTRA profit in comparison with humans.

3. Trader with courier interface will work better. New order update speed will make trader to stay idle most of the time in Jita.

Would it be possible to have the Trader automatically start trading routine after updating orders, rather than relying on the set timers it uses now? Alternatively set itself to idle so it does Project Discovery/PI in the time between updating/creating orders?

Lunkan78 wrote:
Would it be possible to have the Trader automatically start trading routine after updating orders, rather than relying on the set timers it uses now? Alternatively set itself to idle so it does Project Discovery/PI in the time between updating/creating orders?Something like "blind mode" in miner when bot predict that nothing may happen during next 10-15 minutes to start PI/PD activity? Will add this no problems, but not in the first version after release.