TradeDangerous
Copyright (C) Oliver "kfsone" Smith, July 2014
Copyright (C) Bernd 'Gazelle' Gollesch 2016, 2017
Copyright (C) Jonathan 'eyeonus' Jones 2018 - 2021

REQUIRES PYTHON 3.4 OR HIGHER.

What is Trade Dangerous?

TradeDangerous is a set of powerful trading tools for Elite Dangerous, organized around one of the most powerful trade run optimizers available.

The TRO is a heavy hitter that can calculate complex routes with multiple stops while taking into account the profits you make along the route

The price data in TradeDangerous is either manually entered or crowd sourced from a website such as Tromador's Trading Dangerously, often using a plugin such as the included eddblink.

What can it do for me?

You're in a ship with 8 cargo spaces that can make 8.56 ly per jump; you're willing to make upto 2 jumps between stations, and we want to see how much money we can make if in 2 trade stops (hops).

trade.py run --credits 5000 --capacity 8 --ly-per 8.56 --jumps 2 --hops 2

If we ran this, TD would search the galaxy for trade runs. But it could take us days to reach some of them. So lets say we're currently at Kummer City in the Andere system.

trade.py run --from "andere/kummer city"
    --credits 5000 --capacity 8 --ly-per 8.56 --jumps 2 --hops 2

(The above represents a single line)

That's a lot to type. TD is designed to support laziness when it comes to typing, so it allows for all kinds of short-cuts.

trade.py ru
    --fr and/kumm     find a station matching 'kumm' in a
                      system matching 'and'
    --cr 5k           'k', 'm' and 'b' are recognized suffixes
    --cap 8           8 units of cargo
    --ly 8.56         maximum distance *per jump*
    --ju 2            maximum 2 jumps

The default for hops is 2, so I didn't have to include it.

You can also use "=" to connect an option with its values:

trade.py ru --fr=and/kumm --cr=5k --cap=8 --ly=8.56 --ju=2

With the data at the time I write this, this produces:

ANDERE/Kummer City -> ANDERE/Malzberg Vision
  ANDERE/Kummer City: 6 x Titanium, 2 x Polymers,
  G 224-46/Lorrah Dock: 7 x Coltan, 1 x Lepidolite,
  ANDERE/Malzberg Vision +8,032cr (502/ton)

This tells us our overall route (line #1), what load to pick up from the first station, what to sell it for and pick up at the second stop and where to finish and unload for our final profit.

Note that it could have just told us to pick up 6 Titanium (the max we could afford) or 8 Copper (the highest profit we could fill up with), Instead, TD crunched hard numbers and maximized the earnings of every cargo space AND credit.

If you want to give Trade Dangerous a try, look no further than the Setup Guide and the User Guide.

Curious about programming with Trade Dangerous/Python? Take the Python Quick Peek.